Admin l Saturday, March 18, 2023
LEKKI, Lagos – Destruction of electoral materials, voter suppression and intimidation has been the hallmark of the March 18, governorship and house of assembly election in Lagos State.
This is taking place irrespective of low turnout of voters for the election. At Victoria Garden City, VGC, officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC were nowhere to be found by 1:30pm.
At Agungui, by the Central Mosque, our correspondent spotted a sacrifice by the side even as many electorates were seen waiting for arrival of INEC. Ironically, the unit by the mosque has over 1000 registered electorates but by noon, no INEC official was in sight but they were seen in other surrounding polling units with less than 100 electorates.
Those who are alleged to be responsible for the destruction of the electoral materials were seen intimidating and preventing aggrieved people from video recording the incident.
At PU 0122 at Babatunde Eletu street with over 800 voters, things went on normal but became rowdy. Member of the security forces came around and were reassured that things will be orderly but as soon as they left thugs came in and destroyed all the voting material rending all the materials useless.
But few metres away in other polling units with less than 100 voters, things went on normal without any intimidation.
Speaking on the incident, the police office attached to the disrupted polling units at Babatunde Eletu in Osapa London told our correspondent that there was nothing he could do in the circumstance. He said he was not armed and was not less than an observer but said that this not withstanding, what will be will be.
He said he called for reinforcement initially but that when his men came, those on ground reassured them that nothing will go wrong only for the thugs to storm the place and destroy all the INEC materials and BVAS as soon as the policemen left the scene.
